Alanis Morissette Quotes

My own approach has always been to push intense emotions down and attempt to deal with them later. When I was younger, I was terrified to express anger because it would often kick-start a horrible reaction in the men in my life.

Violence was very much a part of my mother's upbringing - a little less so with my father's, but my father was an angry man when he was young. He was angry and frustrated and had no idea how to channel anger.

We need to ditch the idea that there is any value in the strong and silent man being in any way attractive. Being silent isn't being strong, it's being a victim.

When I was growing up, the men in my life were abusive; women were the ones I ran to for comfort.

I realised one day that men are emotional cripples. We can't express ourselves emotionally, we can only do it with anger and humour. Emotional stability and expression comes from women.

My dad was quiet, angry, shut down. So my thing is: I express everything that's there. I want to get it all out.

I have a lot of aggression in me that needs to come out in a not-very-precise or articulate way.

I grew up in a family that despised displays of strong emotion, rage in particular. We stewed. We sulked. When arguments did occur, they were full-scale conniptions, and we regarded them as family failings. Afterward, we withdrew from one another and tried our best to strike the event from our memories.

I tried to walk away from standup, but it's been my therapy - my way of expressing anger, disappointments, and fears and celebrating my hopes. It helps to regulate my thought process.

I don't know if it's a male thing, but a lot of our emotions end up manifesting themselves in the form of anger.

It's so rare to see a woman lose control and also gain it back. Women are always told, 'Oh, be in control of your feelings,' and a woman is never allowed to express her anger without being demonised as being PMS-y.

I grew up with lots of anger, frustration, and violence in my heart.

Another night, I dreamed I saw my father sweeping out the barn floor clean, and would not suffer the wheat to be brought in the barn. He appeared to me to be in anger.

I have been blessed with roles that allow me to express something very personal at a specific time in my life. I seek them out; acting is my therapy.

I think my biggest focus for myself is learning how to continue to get through the trauma that my father has caused in my life.

If anyone would have been paying serious attention to my puppet shows, I would have been sent to therapy very young.

Men who have been raised violently have every reason to believe it is appropriate for them to control others through violence; they feel no compunction over being violent to women, children, and one another.

Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss.

I also had to work through the violation of my date rape, my unhealthy relationships with men, my anger toward the people involved in the scandal, and those who exploited me afterwards.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

So I'm not worried about the emotions I carry with me, because I'm happy that I have them; I think it's good for the work I do. The emotions that are not healthy are the ones you hold inside, like anger.

I turned to music originally because of my past and needing a release or an outlet to get out anger or frustration or hurt.

I do find acting cathartic.

Yeah, to me, acting is very therapeutic. I get out a lot of anger and frustration.

I lost boundaries as a child that I didn't even realize it and it wasn't talked about back then. You know, it was something you just buried and dealt with, and moved forward. What could you do about it?